Page 61 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

"Okay, that's...a really good point. It's a little stupid to sit around and expect that you're going to give away all your dirty little secrets."

"Especially to you of all people."

"Sure, but how many of them have you told Kayden?"

"That's none of your business," he said, his casual tone disappearing and giving way to the hostility I was used to.

I sighed. “And I thought we were actually getting somewhere."

I was met with silence, but I didn't turn around to gauge whether the silence came from him being pissed or if he was just thinking.

I needed to take my advice and not try to break down everything.

At the beginning of...whatever the fuck was going on between us, there had definitely been a lot of overthinking on my part.

I'd been trying to anticipate what we were going to do, figure out why we were doing things, and just..

.trying to put together the various pieces of the puzzle to make sense of it all.

Yet the whole time, it had run contrary to how I handled pretty much everything.

At first, I'd been so preoccupied with needling him about learning to take it easy and then trying to get him to take the idea for a whirl, that I'd stopped doing it myself.

Lately, and tonight especially, I had been operating purely on instinct, on an intuitive level, and it had worked out.

Sure, it had been messy and didn't turn out anywhere close to what I'd hoped for the night, but that was life for you.

It never worked out the way you wanted, and even when you tried to make life work in certain ways, it snubbed you at every turn.

So why not simply enjoy the ride and figure out if the destination was worth camping out in for a bit?

"Messy," he muttered, stirring me from my thoughts.

I glanced at him, brow quirking when I saw the perfect rings I'd been trying to achieve coming from his lips. "What?"

"My life," he snorted, puffing heavily on the cigar and giving a rough cough before carefully easing back in his seat. "That's what it's felt like for...well, forever. Like, my life is just one mess after another."

"Not to, uh, diminish shit, but I think if you scratch the surface of most people, they'll say the same thing."

"Yeah. And they're always so goddamn miserable about it, not that I have any room to talk about being a miserable son of a bitch."

"You're not miserable, just...grumpy."

"I hate when you try to make me feel better, that's how I know things are really bad."

"Alright, fuck you too."

He snorted, and the potential anger in me died at the rare glint of mischief in his eyes.

"I just...I've spent so long trying to make life, my life, make sense, and it just..

.doesn't. Every time I think I've got something figured out, something is waiting right around the corner to fuck me up.

Thought I had my shit figured out, then I fucked it up and got smacked down to beat cop.

Then I get a handle on that and feel like shit's going my way for a bit and boom, suddenly I find out my ex had a whole ass kid that was mine that she kept from me and I have to figure out what I'm going to do about that. "

"How's that going?"

"What?"

"Figuring out what you're going to do about that? Figured out how to deal with the overwhelming panic of being a parent without having time to brace for it?"

"More like trying to figure out how to be a parent without bringing up all the fucked up shit my parents did to me in the process."

I smiled. “Well, then that means you already decided to be in Micah's life."

There was a pause, and then he grunted. “Yeah, guess I did. Not quite sure how to feel about that."

"Who the fuck said you had to know?"

"Certainly would make things easier."

"Would it?"

"Probably not."

I chuckled, finally deciding to pick my chair up and twist it around so I could face him.

If we were going to have what was basically our first heart-to-heart, then I should probably pay attention.

"So you know what you're going to do, but you don't know how to feel about it or how to deal with your feelings on it. "

"Pretty much," he said, wrinkling his nose. "It's funny, I bitch about how you never take anything seriously...for the most part anyway, but you have an easier time with pretty much everything. You don't struggle."

"Look, if you think I don't struggle, then you clearly haven't been paying attention," I scoffed. "I struggle. "

"The only thing you seem to struggle with is me."

"Well, that's just normal. And expected."

"Funny."

I winked. “Look, it's true, but it's not just you. There's shit in my life that you haven't seen, alright? Things that bother me, things that I guess you could say haunt me or plague me."

He stared at me for a moment, chewing his bottom lip before shrugging. "Like your dad?"

It wasn't what I was expecting him to say, and I didn't think I could be blamed for stiffening at the reminder. “That...yeah, okay. Sure, that's one thing. You really decided to go right for the throat, didn't you?"

To his credit, his wince was as open as it was genuine as far as I could tell. "Wasn't trying to. But it's something you never talk about. Even when your sister brings it up, you immediately find a way to avoid the topic."

"Boy," my tone was drier than any desert. "I can't imagine why I wouldn't want to talk about it. I don't see you offering up personal insights into what it was like growing up with your parents. Feel like sharing?"

He rolled his eyes. “See? Now you're just turning it on me instead."

My lip curled. “What do you want me to say, Jace?

I lost my dad. I got to watch him die, alright?

I got to see him be just fine, and then the next thing I know, he's this.

..barely alive thing hooked up to all these machines.

Everyone wanted me to stick around, to say goodbye, but there were no goodbyes.

There was only staring at the thing that used to be my father, and watching until he finally just..

.died. What was I going to do? Tell something that couldn't respond?

That didn't think or feel anymore? Everyone's so worried about my closure, but no one wants to consider that there was never going to be closure.

You don't just say goodbye to your dad's body, because that's all he was in the end, a corpse with a pulse.

There is no goodbye to that shit, alright? "

He stared at me impassively for a moment and then nodded. "I guess I can't really argue with you. When my parents died...it was like being freed. It's when they were alive that haunts me."

"I guess there's no real way for either of us to know which one is better or worse. Being haunted by losing them too early, or losing them too late."

"I don't think either way is better or worse; they're both bad. Just in different ways."

There was truth to that, but I was still irritated that he had decided it was important that I talk about my father. "So?"

"What?"

"Did it make you feel better? Hearing about my dad dying?"

"Better? No."

"Then why ask?"

"I thought there wasn't a point in trying to understand things?"

Oh, right, I'd forgotten how clever he thought he was on occasion. "Alright, fuck you. Go pass out again."

I wasn't surprised to see the flash of anger, but it was the hurt under the surface that took me by surprise first. More shocking was the way he turned his face away, nostrils flaring, and a twist to his lip, but.

..no comment, no comeback, no telling me to go fuck myself.

Instead, he stared down at the street below, and though it was empty save for a plastic bag caught in the wind, shimmying down the sidewalk, he looked enraptured by it.

"You never asked me what happened. Why I got suspended from the force," he said slowly.

"You didn't seem like you wanted to talk about it," I said, having enough sense to bite down on the rest of the sentence. Because I clearly hadn’t wanted to mention my father, which was a wound that never stopped hurting.

But I kept that to myself, because I could see something opening up behind his eyes as he prepared to say something he probably hadn't said to anyone else.

"The man, he...the guy there," his eyes flicked up toward the buildings across from us, most of them dark save for a couple where soft light radiated from inside the rooms. If he was looking for someone to save him, the only person around right now was him.

..well, and the stoners, but they had moved back inside.

"He was...he was raping her. And I'm guessing he had been doing it for quite a while.

I don't know if one of the women there was her mother or not, but. ..neither of them cared."

It was more or less what I suspected had happened, but being right didn't magically make my stomach turn any more gently.

I hadn't experienced firsthand the foulness that sat at the hearts of humanity, but I was sure Jace had.

I wasn't stupid. In a lot of ways, my devil may care attitude and general acceptance of the twists of fate inoculated me against the horrors of the world.

Sometimes you didn't need to experience the awful things in life to find a way to deal with its existence, and in some ways, accept it before it found a way to burrow under your skin.